Disclaimer

 

Mighty, mighty Amaterasu, life-giving spirit of the world! Goddess, who from nothingness didst draw the seas, the earth and the heavens, eternal flame, Ye who sparked the sun! O Goddess, custodian and avenger of sacred Nippon, a timeline where the Japanese is not a nation of hive-minded monsters, thee we thank!

 

In the December 1999 issue of Reason Magazine, Charles Paul Freund wrote an article untitled: “Spilt History”. When contemplating the use of Alternate History to justify domestic and foreign policy, he asked himself: what's this about?

 

“Counterfactuals, allohistory, parahistorical conjecture, what if? The bastard child of causal contemplation has gone by many names, as if it were trying to escape its reputation as an unworthy, unprofessional waste of time and instead start life over again in more respectable guise. It has never worked. British historian E.H. Carr, in his 1961 "What is History?" lectures, dismissed all "what if?" speculation as a "parlour game." David Hackett Fischer cited "the fictional question" as a historian's fallacy: "All historical 'evidence' for what might have happened if [John Wilkes] Booth had missed his mark is necessarily taken from the world in which he hit it," Fischer wrote 30 years ago. "There is no way to escape this fundamental fact." The German historian Karl Hampe once declared in the Teutonic Absolute that "History knows no 'if.'"

 

The objections to imagined historical alternatives seem impressive: What-ifs can never prove anything, can never be tested, can spin out into an infinite number of contradictory scenarios, etc. What then is the point of indulging in them? Worse for the counterfactual, if its critics were to decide tomorrow that History does indeed know an "if" or two, these same critics would certainly reject it anew on the grounds that it is impossibly reductionist. Is the course of Western history really to be balanced on the alternate possible shapes of Cleopatra's nose? Can any kingdom ever have been lost merely for the want of a nail? Is this, as historian Niall Ferguson--a defender of counterfactuals--allows, not merely worrying over spilt milk, but worrying over the milk we might have spilled, but which is actually still safe in the bottle?”

 

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As any other website depicting an Alternate History scenario, I’m worrying about “the milk still safe in the bottle”. Is this site, then, an “unworthy, unprofessional waste of time”? There’s a high probability that the documents contained in this website are just that: an unworthy and unprofessional –and fun– waste of time. Here I’m imagining a world when Japan never fought against the U.S. and Britain for hegemony in the western Pacific, instead it fought against the Soviet Union for supremacy in Northeast Asia between 1938 and 1939 –and lost.

 

Why I’m indulging in such activity? Well, I built this site for two reasons: the first is the mere joy of do it. And the second, and more important for me, is that in most of the alternate history timelines out there dealing with Japan, this country is –with some enlightened exceptions– stereotyped to the extreme. Japan is not presented as a country, inhabited and governed by human beings, but rather as a mindless physical entity, a sort of compressed gas that tends naturally to expansion and explosion. I want to make something different from the Eurocentric and Gringocentric chauvinistic rants I’ve read before.

 

Then, the question arises: is this website an example of “historical revisionism”? No. First this expression is an odd phraseology. Quoting Justin Raimondo: “Our understanding of history is being constantly revised and updated, as new evidence comes to light, which is why "revisionism" - acting as a constant prod to orthodoxy - is the motor of intellectual progress. We need more revisionism, not less.”

 

Second, I’m not describing actual historical facts (at least not after 1938), this is a mere exercise of imagination –my imagination. I’m not offering a “new view” of history, either. This is just a work of fiction, just as any other Alternate History scenario.

 

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A “Fair Use Notice” (yes, I’m exaggerating, anyway…)

 

Much like a lot of other alternate history fans on the internet, most of the data used in my documents came from books and on-line sources: in my case I used mostly the latter. I counted at least 310 documents from where I extracted all kind of data: from the name of a far-left Korean terrorist organization operating in China in the 1930s to Fukuzawa Yukichi’s quotes; from the Japanese population in Manchuria in 1939 to Sakhalin Island’s oil production. In many cases I found isolated data, so I don't even know where they come from.

 

Now, lets make it clear: this site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This website is not meant to be an infringement on the property rights of any of the copyright holders of those documents: this is –obviously!– a not-for-profit fan-operated website for my own enjoyment and probably the criticism of others. All pictures are used to illustration purposes only. Further, the web site is not affiliated with any of the vendors or other web sites whose links are included here.

 

I believe this “constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes (or mere fun, like myself!). For more information go to:

 

       http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.

 

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner” (if you can find them). The only thing over which I claim complete ownership is the sequence of events depicted in this website: the Soviet-Japanese War, the Post-War years, the Great Reform, etc. I know it’s worthless, but it’s mine.

 

Finally, if you see data or pictures on this site that is yours and that you don't want it up here, please notify me, but be prepared to prove to me that the data or picture is yours.